House Republicans turn up the heat in standoff with DOJ

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans say the FBI hasn’t adequately addressed the issue of bias within the agency and are threatening to hold top department officials in contempt or even impeach them.

The department’s internal watchdog issued a report last week criticizing the FBI’s handling of the 2016 probe into Democrat Hillary Clinton’s emails. But it said political bias didn’t affect the outcome of the investigation that eventually cleared her.

At a House hearing Tuesday, Republicans angrily asked inspector general Michael Horowitz how anti-Trump texts between some employees who worked on the Clinton probe didn’t influence the outcome. They also complained that they haven’t received some of the documents they have demanded.

Horowitz repeated his conclusion that the outcome of the investigation was determined by prosecutors’ assessment of the facts, not by bias.